Wind-turbine maker Vestas announced today that it expects to lay off 2,335 employees by ceasing manufacturing at a factory, merging units and centralizing administrative functions.

The layoffs, primarily in Europe and specifically Denmark, will reduce Vestas' fixed costs by 150 million Euros, said the firm.

Of the 2,335 employees being dismissed, 182 are in the United States, 1,719 in Europe, and 404 in China and the rest of the world.

In addition to the planned layoffs of 2,335 employees in the coming months, the Danish firm said it is preparing for a potential slowdown in the United States in case the Production Tax Credit is not extended.

This could result in layoffs of an additional 1,600 employees at factories in the United States, said Vestas. The decision whether to layoff employees in the United States will be made this year, said the company.

Vestas spent about $1 billion to build four plants in Windsor, Brighton and Pueblo and a research facility in Louisville. In all, Vestas employs about 1,800 people in Colorado.

"We will continuously adjust Vestas according to the most active markets so that we, in the most efficient way, take advantage of the fact that we are a global company," said Ditlev Engel, president and CEO of Vestas.

"There is nothing wrong with the quality of our employees' efforts or our products in the markets where we will lay off employees or close down factories. But obviously, we have to operate where the markets are," he added.

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Andrew Longeteig, spokesman for Vestas in the United States, said the 182 U.S. positions will come from support functions, but the exact locations have not been determined. All of the changes in Vestas will be announced no later than Feb. 8, he said.

Longeteig said the 182 jobs in the U.S. are approximately five percent of the company's U.S. and Canadian workforce.

Vestas' Engel said that the extent of the layoffs is partly a wish to improve and streamline Vestas and partly due to external factors, in particular, the economic downturn in the OECD countries, which include not only European countries but the United States and Canada.

The company said the staff reduction should also be viewed in the light of the necessity of preparing Vestas for a future downturn in the U.S. wind energy market.

"We are now preparing Vestas for the situation where one of our largest single markets, the USA, may be facing a tough 2013," said Engel. "This will have a huge impact on our business, if we do not act now."

Vestas said Engel is referring to the expiration of the current U.S. Production Tax Credit scheme on Dec. 31.

Engel said that it is understandable if the Danish public perceives Vestas as a company that has treated its employees with "an iron fist" - with three rounds of layoffs in three years.

"I can certainly understand if employees as well as the people outside Vestas consider us to be in a state of crisis," he said. "We have got to work our way out of this situation and the only way we can do that is by proving that we, with our global presence, high customer satisfaction and the industry's best performing wind power systems will come out stronger after the elimination race which is currently taking place within the renewable energy sector."

Late last year, analysts said that after two strong sales years, Vestas Wind Systems, which has the four factories in Colorado, was bracing for the market to "fall off a cliff" if Congress fails to renew a wind-energy tax credit.

The wind-production tax credit, or PTC, is set to expire at the end of 2012, and that could lead to as much as an 85 percent drop in wind installations, according to the consulting group IHS Emerging Energy.

"The industry is under a dark cloud," said Matthew Kaplan, associate director of IHS Emerging energy.

"The looming expiration of the PTC has essentially stalled wind energy investment beyond 2012," Longeteig, a Vestas spokesman said in December. "We would anticipate the impact on jobs - especially manufacturing jobs - would be severe."

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